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This collection of yummy recipes is meant to give Aussie cuisine options to international food buffs, and to promote meatless eating. Our unique fare does not have its roots in Aboriginal culture, nor did it begin in 1788 when Captain Arthur Phillip's soldiers forced the first fleet of enslaved convicts to plant celery, parsley, spinach and wheat near Sydney Cove. Australian Cuisine germinated through multi-culturalism. Adventurers of mixed nationalities braved far-away oceans then rattled their bones in horse-drawn carts along perilous tracks to the gold and gem fields of the outback.
Men mined while women tilled the unforgiving soil around their makeshift shanties. They built communal kitchens where ethnic culinary traditions were exchanged, blended and diversified. The children made wine and beer from native plants and fruits in order to cheat death-by-thirst when summer sucked the creeks and rivers dry. Mealtime saw tables laden with vegetables, delicious grain-based edibles and fruit in season, rather than cooked flesh because plants needed less water than livestock for whom they would also have to find fodder. A poem titled "my Country" by Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1967) describes this island continent.
The recipes on this site are genuinely from people who live in the land of Oz; some old, some are new. Scattered between are sprigs of traditional Australiana-songs of nostalgic value, instructions on how to make a fly-trap, a scarecrow, a list of table manners and recipes that I, who live under the Southern Cross invite you to enjoy.
“It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world’s ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures – the funnel-web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stonefish – are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. … If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It’s a tough place.” Excerpt from Down Under a 2000 travelogue book about Australia written by best-selling travel writer Bill Bryson.
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